The present invention relates to an instant mousse mix.
The basic ingredients of an instant mousse mix are sugar, flavourings, and a whipping agent. Acid is usually present in fruit flavoured mousse and, if desired, colourants may be added. In the preparation of an instant mousse, a quantity of the mousse mix is combined with either heavy cream or milk and whipped vigorously until the right firm texture for eating is obtained. The whipping agent may be gelatin or an emulsifier (which may be present in the creamer when a creamer is used as may be the case when the mousse is prepared from milk), or it may be a product capable of releasing or generating carbon dioxide readily on contact with water or acid.
In U.S. patent application Ser. No. 823,605, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,760,138, there is described a dry carbonating complex which is prepared by
(a) admixing a metal hydroxide, oxide or mixture thereof with an aqueous carbohydrate solution at a temperature of less than 25.degree. C.; PA0 (b) adding carbon dioxide to the solution for forming a reaction medium while maintaining the resulting reaction medium at a temperature of less than 25.degree. C.; and then PA0 (c) drying the reaction medium for obtaining a dry, stable complex (hereinafter referred to as DCS).
The metallic hydroxides or oxides may be those of the alkali or alkaline earth metals such as calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, barium, etc.
Although the dry carbonating complexes described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,760,138 are capable of releasing or generating carbon dioxide readily on contact with water or acid, we have found that most of them are totally unsuitable for use in instant mousses. In fact, surprisingly, only the complex prepared by using the hydroxide or oxide of calcium, hereinafter for the sake of brevity referred to as Ca.sup.++ DCS, is suitable since DCS prepared by using the hydroxide or oxide of other metals such as sodium or potassium does not provide the desired whipping properties, firm texture development and stability of the instant mousse products. This is even more surprising since other sources of calcium such as calcium carbonate or calcium chloride are unsuitable since they do not function to whip or stabilise the product as does DCS, and in addition, they contribute a salty off-flavour to the product.